Dr. Diane Harper made no value judgments: she laid out the scientific facts.
Please note that some of the conclusions (value judgments) that were made in the
Infomail re:
Gardasil ,
should NOT be attributed to Dr. Diane Harper, whose presentation at the
International Public Conference on Vaccination, was more nuanced than the
Philadelphia Bulletin reported.

Dr. Harper presented the following facts:

1. "70 percent of all HPV infections resolve themselves without treatment
within a year. Within two years, the number climbs to 90 percent. Of the
remaining 10 percent of HPV infections, only half will develop into cervical
cancer;"

2. "There have been no efficacy trials in girls under 15 years."

"There also is not enough evidence gathered on side effects to know that
safety is not an issue."

3. "To date, 15,037 girls have officially reported adverse side effects from
Gardasil to the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). These
adverse reactions include Guilliane Barre, lupus, seizures, paralysis, blood
clots, brain inflammation and many others. The CDC acknowledges that there
have been 44 reported deaths."

Dr. Harper did not draw conclusions about whether (or not) to vaccinate--except
to say, "It is silly to mandate vaccination of 11 to 12 year old girls" given
the lack of efficacy and safety data.

Her approach is to educate by laying out the facts, leaving individuals free to
chose whether or not they want their daughters to be vaccinated with the HPV
vaccine, Gardasil.

Dr. Harper did not explicitly raise serious doubts about the medical
justification for use of the HPV vaccines in Western-industrialized countries.
What she said was:

"the benefits and risks of both Pap screening and HPV vaccination needed to
be reviewed and the value that each of the four components of the decision
were personal and had to be made by each person deciding in what way she
would participate in cervical cancer screening."

The reported British adverse event data were not cited by Dr. Harper, as
these were cited in the British press after her talk:
In Britain, the government began administering the vaccine to school-aged girls
last year, more than 2,000 patients reported some kind of adverse reaction
including nausea, dizziness, blurred vision, convulsions, seizures and
hyperventilation. Several reported multiple reactions, with 4,602 suspected
side-effects recorded in total. The most tragic case involved a 14 year-old girl
who dropped dead in the corridor of her school an hour after receiving the
vaccination.

Dr. Harper did not make the statement:: "the incidence of cervical cancer in
the U.S. is already so low that "even if we get the vaccine and continue PAP
screening, we will not lower the rate of cervical cancer in the US."

Finally, the statement that I characterized as the bottom line:
"The rate of serious adverse events is greater than the incidence rate of
cervical cancer."

should read: "The REPORTED rate of serious adverse events is greater than the
incidence rate of cervical cancer."

I hope these corrections clarify the distinction between what Dr. Harper stated
and the conclusions that I and others may have drawn:

"I came away from the talk with the perception that the risk of adverse side
effects is so much greater than the risk of cervical cancer, I couldn't help but
question why we need the vaccine at all," said Joan Robinson, Assistant Editor
at the Population Research Institute.